


Cursed City

by DreamAsIRead



Category: Curse Workers Series - Holly Black, Mortal Instruments Series - Cassandra Clare
Genre: Alternate Universe - Curse Workers Fusion, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-07-21
Updated: 2015-07-21
Packaged: 2018-04-10 11:29:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,635
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4390127
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DreamAsIRead/pseuds/DreamAsIRead
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is a series of related non-chronological drabbles set in a world where Shadowhunters and Downworlders don't exist. Instead, curse workers do.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cursed City

There are a few things you should know about Magnus. First, his parents were workers; his father was a memory worker, his mother, she worked dreams.

“Selamat malam,”she says as she smiles at him from the doorway. His mother’s face, tired and worn as it is, is still lovely in Magnus’ eyes. To the seven year old, his mother will always be the most beautiful person in the world.  
He holds his arms out in a silent gesture and his mother smiles as she moves to his bedside and pulls him into her arms. The smell of the lavender soap she favours washes over him. “Sayang ibu,” he murmurs sleepily.  
“Ibu juga sayang kamu, nak.” She kisses him on the side of the head then lays him back on the bed.  
“Ibu,” Magnus smiles cheekily as she pulls his covers up around him.  
She leans back and raises one eyebrow at his expression, “Yes?”  
“I want to see the story again!” he says loudly. A little too loudly. His mother shushes him, looking back to the open doorway. Magnus tenses, waiting for his father to appear, yelling and ranting, as he always does. When he does not, his mother turns back to him, a knowing smile on her lips.  
“Which story?”  
Magnus remembers to whisper this time, “The story with the princess and the evil vizier.” He smiles, “And the brave adventurer.”  
His mother smiles back. She pulls the glove off her right hand and cups his cheeks. “Cerita di mana si Magnus yang berani selamatkan tuan puteri? Ibu rasa ibu boleh teka kenapa itu cerita kegemaran kamu.”  
Magnus says nothing, waves of drowsiness already starting to come over him. He can almost see the dream already- the land of desserts where the story takes place being built for him in his mind by his mother’s work. As he slips into the dream, he feels her kiss him, lightly, on the forehead, “Selamat malam, sayang.”

The second thing you should know about Magnus. He is haunted. It is a memory. And a recurring dream. His mother tucks him in, kissing him goodnight, just like all the other nights she has done so.  
And it is the last time he ever sees her alive.

“Ini semua salah kamu! Budak syaitan! Kalau bukan kerana kamu, Iriyana takkan mati.”  
Magnus almost chokes, water filling his nose and mouth as his tears continue to flow, seemingly without end.  
“Hey, budak! Kau dengar tak? Aku tengah bercakap denganmu sekarang!”  
His father’s hand is a heavy weight as it slaps against the side of his head. Magnus goes down, clutching his shoulder, still weak from where he’d been slammed against the wall the day before. He looks up at the man he calls father. The man’s eyes hold no hint of mercy. “You killed her,” he hisses, his eyes unfocused. “I’ll kill you.”  
There can be no bargaining with him when he is like this. When the blowback from his memory work messes with his mind so that he can no longer tell what’s real and what’s not. Magnus back away. Too late. His father’s hands wrap around Magnus’ neck. And tighten. And tighten. And tighten.  
Magnus is lifted off the floor. His legs swing, kicking out. His hands scrabble for purchase, bare hands holding on to his father’s wrist. Bare. Hands.  
His fingers dig into the flesh of his father’s arm.  
Please. Stop. Please-  
No!  
He barely has time to register the painful rush of air back into his lungs before another, sharper pain hits him. It strikes deep in the centre of his head and then moves downwards. As soon as it started, it stops. He spits and a string of blood lands on the ground, together with something small and white. A tooth. He stares at it uncomprehendingly.  
His line of sight runs from the tooth to his father’s shoes, and along the man’s prone body. His eyes are wide and staring. Empty. Without a doubt, Magnus knows. He’s dead.

The third thing you need to know about Magnus. He’s a death worker.  
And he killed his father.

________________________________________

Alec is the Lightwood family’s oldest son, their precious heir, as Izzy would say, not without a trace of bitterness. He has a lot of expectations to live up to as the future head of the Lightwood family, a lot of things his parents expect him to do, and to be. But just because you want someone to be a certain way, doesn’t mean they really are.  
Once upon a time, Alec had two secrets. The first, he’s about as straight as a circle. His preferences were initially hidden from his family but the truth came to be known when Izzy caught him snogging some random guy in the back alley behind Pandemonium. He actually felt a perverse sort of thrill in presenting that particular titbit of information to their parents. What are you going to do? Disown me?  
Maryse looked shocked at the news but took everything in stride, the way she was wont to do. As for Robert, his expression was a sight to see. Alec watched him struggle, practically choking on whatever he wanted to say before he eventually came out with the brilliant gem: “What do you think turned you gay?”  
Alec couldn’t help the derisive laugh that broke its way out of him. He tipped an imaginary top hat at his father- let him make of that what he would- and left the room without saying anything else. They didn’t come after him.  
Maybe in another life, Alec would have feared his parents’ reactions, even tried to hide his sexuality from them. But in the face of the other huge secret he was holding back, the fact that he preferred boys to girls seemed inconsequential.  
Alexander Lightwood is HBG-positive. Or, once again, as Izzy would say, he’s got the heebiegeebies.  
The Lightwoods never had their children tested. Alec suspects he knows why. His mother never speaks about his uncle, her brother. Etienne Trueblood tested positive when he was ten-years-old. The authorities took him in for ‘study’. The Truebloods never saw their son again.  
With a worker in their direct family, the chances of testing positive are so much higher. There isn’t a law for compulsory testing. Yet. And Maryse wasn’t going to take the chance that the government could wrench her children from her if they turned out to be workers.  
As it turns out, that was a shrewd choice.  
Alec remembered when he was ten, and he’d just finished “The Sword in the Stone”. He’d been enthralled with the wizard Merlin’s magic powers, specifically his ability to turn into different animals at will. He tried to imagine himself as Merlin; how cool would it be if he could just close his eyes and WHAM!- turn into any animal he wanted.  
Church the cat had been lounging on Alec’s bed, watching the boy in that intent way that cats generally had about them. Alec had been looking back, and then…  
It was hard to describe, afterwards what, exactly, had happened. He felt the room around him enlarge at the edges, and a not exactly unpleasant pressing sensation in his gut. He remembered falling forwards so that he was on all fours, and suddenly everything in the room seemed out of proportion. A loud yowl sounded and it took him a moment that the sound was coming from his throat. He was so startled by the realisation that he took a few steps back on his paws. At which moment, he registered that he had paws!  
No sooner had he been struck by this strange state of events that Alec was struck by something altogether more worrying. A rippling feeling started in his paws and spread up over his body. He felt as if someone had a draped a length of silk over him and was now dragging it along the length of his back. The room once again enlarged and a buzzing sound rang in his ears. The view he had of the room fragmented and split into different copies of the same image as if he were simultaneously watching the same room through different lenses. And then the most unsettling thing yet, his hands- paws- whatever they were started to feel sticky and wet. The wetness pooled beneath him and Alec barely had time to panic that he seemed to be melting when he felt his head being literally stretched as if two invisible forces were pulling on his ears in opposite directions.  
No! Stop! Turn back!  
He felt his body pull back like a spring that had been stretched too far and then Alec knew no more.  
Needless to say he wasn’t very calm when he eventually woke up, as a cat. Church had moved from the bed to the floor and was nudging him impatiently in the shoulder.  
It took some focus and a lot of panicking before Alec eventually managed to turn himself back into a boy, and had to endure another round of horrendous blowback. He was sick for a week after that, bedridden with exhaustion, and no small amount of terror at what he’d been able to do.  
He hadn’t told his parents, who’d been out of the country on a trip when the incident happened. He knew it would horrify them both, especially Robert, to find out that their son was one of the HBG-positive. A worker. The term was a dirty word in the Lightwoods’ social circle- describing those in the population with their unnatural abilities, feared, shunned, hated, and exiled from normal, proper society.  
No, the fact that Alec Lightwood was a worker- and a rare transformation worker at that- was the one secret that he would keep with him, conceivably, to his grave.


End file.
